Levin, McCain bash failed Air Force logistics system
By
Bob Brewin
A $1 billion investment yielded less than $150 million in usable tech, senators say.
Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calling the $1 billion Air Force Expeditionary Combat Support System “one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement in recent memory.”
In 2010, the Air Force hailed the project as one of those transformation things “designed to close process gaps and increase transparency,” adding that it would “use enterprise resource planning software to more efficiently manage major end items, materiel, people, training and funds.”
Evidently not much ended up transformed by the system, as the two senators -- chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- said they recently learned the Air Force had decided to cancel the contract because it “has not yielded any significant military capability and would cost at least another billion dollars to complete.”
Despite forking over all that cash to Computer Sciences Corp, which won the contract in 2006, Levin and McCain charged the service ended up with hardware and software worth less than $150 million.